Michelle Hiscock

MICHELLE HISCOCK

Paintings from the studio & the field

27 April – 16 May 2021

AU S T R A L I A N GA L L E R I E S SYDNEY

Artist painting en plein air

AU S T R A L I A N GA L L E R I E S SYDNEY

Invites you to the opening

MICHELLE HISCOCK Paintings from the studio & the field Tuesday 27 April 2021 6pm – 8pm 15 Roylston Street Paddington NSW 2021 Current until Sunday 16 May 2021 Open 7 days 10am to 6pm T 02 9360 5177 sydney@australiangalleries.com.au australiangalleries.com.au

Front cover: Ariadne, Woolloomooloo (detail) 2020 oil on board 29.5 x 38 cm

Paperbark dreaming 2020 oil on board 20 x 27 cm

Landscape painting has two starting points. It can begin with noticing a real place, perhaps even one that does not strike others as immediately picturesque. Or it may arise from imagination, memory, meditation on the work of great predecessors. But from whichever side it starts, it will usually elicit an answering impulse from the other, and the two will meet in a synthesis that will be different for each artist, in a unique equilibrium that defines individual style.

With some painters, it is only the final synthesis that we are allowed to see, and that synthesis can too often be predictable and formulaic, feeding the market’s appetite for consistent product. Michelle Hiscock’s pictures, on the other hand, are never the outcome of a preconceived formula. What is so appealing about her exhibitions is that she has the confidence and generosity to let us into the process by which her paintings take shape.

And what we discover is pictures that begin from both starting points, one visibly more than another depending on the case, and that have travelled to different points of synthesis rather than inevitably the same one. Thus there are pictures that are essentially plein-air studies; and there are others that have arisen from the memory of a place, reflection on an experience or the inspiration of a great painter of the past. Their development from one pole to the other is always necessary and motivated, never forced; there is no prescribed midpoint they must all reach in order to achieve the standard look of a brand.

The dialectic that underpins Michelle Hiscock’s painting of the natural world is not mechanical but organic; disciplined and yet spontaneous, like mindful breath, with its regular sequence of inhalation and exhalation, assimilating being and articulating form.

Left bank, Shoalhaven 2021 water-based paints on paper 51 x 41 cm

The break in the weir, Shoalhaven 2019 oil on board 40 x 50 cm

Reader, Shark Beach 2020 oil on board 33 x 40.5 cm

Sunset, Careel Bay 2021 oil on board 40.5 x 33 cm

Shoalhaven black wattles 2020 oil on linen 40.5 x 30 cm

Rock Wall at Burrier, Shoalhaven 2021 oil on board 37 x 23 cm

Balmoral sunrise 2020 oil on canvas 30.5 x 30.5 cm

Sydney Grammar School from Hyde Park 2021 oil on board 20 x 27 cm

Shark Beach and Steele Point 2016 oil on canvas board 20 x 25.5 cm

Southern headland, Shark Bay 2015 oil on board 19 x 25 cm

Pittwater at dusk 2021 oil on gessoed panel 17 x 12 cm

MICHELLE HISCOCK

Along the Hermitage Foreshore Walk 2018 oil on paper on board 12 x 15.5 cm

AU S T R A L I A N GA L L E R I E S MELBOURNE: Derby Street 03 9417 4303 Stock Rooms 03 9417 2422 SYDNEY: Roylston Street 02 9360 5177 enquiries@australiangalleries.com.au australiangalleries.com.au Design and Production by Publishing